Saving Places Documentary - Trailer

Produced, filmed, and edited by Joseph Daniel. Additional footage by Michael Grasseschi, Marielle Huey, Zach Montes, Rich Klinsmann and Woody Coates, 2016 — Welcome to the extraordinary work of HistoriCorps, a Colorado-based non-profit, which has emerged over the past few years as the nation’s leading historical restoration consultant and purveyor for the preservation of culturally significant places. Employing a small, highly trained professional staff and a rapidly expanding workforce of impassioned volunteers, its principle clients have become the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management as well as state and local government agencies and private organizations.

2016 marked the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the National Historic Preservation Act, as well as the Centennial Anniversary of the National Park Service. To commemorate these momentous milestones and to further promote the importance of preserving our national heritage HistoriCorps partnered with Preservation50 and the U.S Forest Service to produce a documentary entitled Saving Places, which follows the projects undertaken by HistoriCorps and the U.S. Forest Service over the course of this year. Preservation50 is the United States’ four-year effort to celebrate, learn from, and leverage the National Historic Preservation Act’s first five decades to assure historic preservation’s vibrant future in America. Saving Places encompasses the very ethos of that endeavor. An unprecedented coalition of public, private, and nonprofit sector organizations have joined under the Preservation50 umbrella.

Saving Places takes viewers onsite “as it happens” at over a dozen restoration projects from Virginia to Alaska, California to New Hampshire, leaving them with an exhilarating new appreciation for preserving their own heritage.Think American Experience meets This Old House meets Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and you have a sense of the unique blend of rich history, informative restoration instruction, reality travel experiences, and modern production value that is Saving Places. Viewers discover the historical back-story of each project, experience the environmental context and natural setting of each location, and learn alongside real-life volunteers how to properly repair and rebuild in compliance with strict standards for restoration, preservation and rehabilitation including the use of tools and materials most closely associated with the original construction.